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June 15, 2011

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A veteran conservative movement figure said today his group is launching a television ad and retail campaign in Iowa aimed at drumming up grassroots intrest in a return to the gold standard.

Jeffrey Bell, a former Reagan aide and conservative author, said the group American Principles in Action (of which he's policy director) hopes to use Tea Party members' interest in an issue that seemed to have faded decades ago to drive it back onto the agenda of Republican presidential candidates.

His organization conducted focus groups on the issue in the Midwest last year, and "the Tea Party response was astonishing."

"If the thing bubbles up, the candidates are going to have to respond and move closer to our position, which is that the paper-based system is bankrupt, has run its course, and we have to have honest money again," he said.

Arguments over the gold standard date back more than a century, and their ideological charge is linked in part to the fact that making dollars convertible to gold would in theory limit the government's capacity to act in the economy. The idea hasn't been embraced by major figures in either party for years, though the Wall Street Journal has maintained conservative interet in versions of it.

Bell complained that while some Republicans pay lip service to the idea, few seem to have really engaged it.

"It’s something like motherhod for some of the conservative candidates, but they don’t know enough about it to know what their position is" he said.

The push comes amid a (relative) surge of national interest in what had been seen as exotic economic policies. Utah recently became the first state to recognize gold and silver U.S. Mint coins as legal tender, and more than a dozen other states are considering similar bills or alternative currency plans.

Bell's currently in the coure of a 19-stop bus tour through Iowa, ending July 2. Gary Johnson has already stopped by, and Bell said he's had interest from four other candidates.

Ron Paul, of course, has long supported abolishing the Federal Reserve and establishing a gold-back dollar, though his plans stop short of a full return to the gold standard. And Herman Cain said he supported examining the idea.

"If we go back to the gold standard, it prohibits the federal reserve from inflating the currency like they've done over the past few years," Cain told POLITICO's Juana Summers recently.

The reason liberals and Wall Street bankers so vehemently oppose the Gold Standard, is because it would eliminate men's ability to manipulate the currency. The dollar would have an absolute value that would not and could not be weakened to cater to the Import/Export businesses.

I'm not against this - I think it could be a good thing overall. I'm not really a student of monetary policy - the only real risk I see is that by doing this we're saying that we have no confidence in our government... and I think that's relatively apparent anyway.

Too soon. Wait until inflation starts pinching people's lifestyles and then the gold standard will be an easy sell. But people have had it good with low inflation for too long. Right now the argument is too abstract for most Americans. But when they start feeling the pinch, then lookout.

I have a better idea. How about we build a time machine so we can send all the right wing loons back to, say, 1890. They will be happy, as they fight to survive in their social darwinist world, and the rest of use will be all the better for their absence.

Paleo do you like spending $4 on a box of cereal? Or $4 for a gallon of gas? These commodities haven't suddenly gained in value, but the dollar has lost much of its value. A strong dollar backed by gold would help every single American but especially the poor and middle class. It would encourage savings and discourage the kind of financial mismanagement practiced by banks in the last few decades.

Liberalism is a great idea until you run out of other people's money to spend. Not the exact quote but more or less something that Margaret Thatcher said. So when you can't tax or borrow, then all the liberal is left with is printing more money out of thin air and diluting the savings and purchasing power of every American.

If you study history like I do, then you'll see that the times when the dollar is strongest is the times that America's economy was strongest. 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s were all decades when America was blessed with a strong dollar. A weak dollar only helps billionaires and bankers: it allows them to purchase valuable assets on the cheap and pay back their debts with a weak dollar.

LOL. Obviously hit a nerve with a lot this crowd. Because they really want to take this country back to 1890.
You want a real depression? Just reinstate the gold standard. Prices will be cheaper. But you won't have a lot of money to buy them.

Paleo, only you would count being an annoying jackass who is disregarded by all as a virtue. But whatever floats your boat sparky. If our scorn makes you feel validated on some deeply personal level then more power to ya.

Paleo, it is true that current weak dollars will take up less space in your wallet than gold dollars...but since a dollar is only good for what it can actually purchase, why would you care? Study the history of the German mark and you will conclude that the Gold Standard will stabilize and strengthen the whole economy.

"If you study history like I do, then you'll see that the times when the dollar is strongest is the times that America's economy was strongest. 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s were all decades when America was blessed with a strong dollar.

And during those times we were off the gold standard.

Posted By: "If you study history like I do, then you'll see that the times when the dollar is strongest is the | June 15, 2011 at 12:52 PM

Paleo, tax rates have almost nothing to do with economic growth. America stood virtually alone in the 50s and 60s as Europe and Japan rebuilt their shattered post-war economies....Had America had a friendlier tax code, as even the liberal hero John F. Kennedy recognized when he slashed the top tax rate from 90% to 70%, then America would still be booming and not falling behind...

@12:52, you are wrong! We were off the Gold Standard by the fact that you couldn't walk into any bank and demand a gold coin for your dollar, but the dollar was backed by gold until Nixon cut all links to it in 1971. The dollar quickly lost much of its value...

"Study the history of the German mark and you will conclude that the Gold Standard will stabilize and strengthen the whole economy." Germany? You mean the country with "socialized medicine," widespread unionization, and six weeks vacation for all? Okay. You give me those things, and I'll give you your gold standard.

Gold Standard? Give me a break. Gold is a COMMODITY: it only has as much value as traders and speculators are willing to give it - just like the paper dollar. The notion that a gold dollar will always have the same spending value is just a childish fantasy.

"The Gold Standard should be revived and will work if we follow the German model when they reevaluated the valueless and inflationary Reichsmark into the gold Deutschmark."

The Reichsmark was worthless because Nazi Germany had just been obliterated and the Deutsche mark was not backed by gold but rather the Bretton Woods system. In fact it was controlled much like our money was thru their own version of the federal reserve.

Posted By: "The Gold Standard should be revived and will work if we follow the German model when they reevaluat | June 15, 2011 at 01:13 PM

Paleo, tax rates have almost nothing to do with economic growth. America stood virtually alone in the 50s and 60s as Europe and Japan rebuilt their shattered post-war economies....Had America had a friendlier tax code, as even the liberal hero John F. Kennedy recognized when he slashed the top tax rate from 90% to 70%, then America would still be booming and not falling behind"
Tax rates have nothing to do with economic growth? Isn't that Republican heresey? But you maintain that the tax rates of 50 years ago is responsible for our current situation. Fascinating. As for JFK, likes to use that example even though he was pursuing Keynesian policies of stimulating demand in a somewhat sluggish economy:
"Kennedy's economic policies were rooted in a Keynesian belief in the stimulative effects of budget deficits. While FDR and his aides had embraced countercyclical deficits as necessary in times of recession or depression, Kennedy was the first to advocate planned deficits in a time of neither war nor economic emergency. The aim was for the tax cuts to stimulate demand, driving the economy from the bottom up."

Contrasted with....1980s and 1990s were all decades when America was blessed with a strong dollar.I realize RyanT is just throwing up talking points he doesn't understand but a little consistency would be nice.

Posted By: 971. The dollar quickly lost much of its value...

Contrasted with....1980s and 1990s were all | June 15, 2011 at 01:25 PM

Paleo, I meant to say the artificially high tax rates of the 1950s had nothing to do with our economic growth. Tax rates do play a large role in economic growth usually when your competitors are playing on an even field with you, which the in the 1950s was not the case. Paleo, do you deny that JFK cut taxes for all including the rich? ...."A rising tide lifts all boats"~JFK, early supply sider

The Gold reserve act in the 30's pretty much made it illegal to own gold privately and FIXED the price of gold to $35 = 1 ounce. It remained that way until 1971. When the fed made private ownership of gold available, the price of gold shot up from $35 an ounce to $500 an ounce within a decade. Look up the Bretton Woods system and do some reading.

"...."A rising tide lifts all boats"~JFK, early supply sider" No, Keynesian. As I quoted in my last post. There is nothing inherently wrong with tax cuts. They can stimulate economic growth by increasing demand. It depends on the circumstances. What JFK and other Keynesians would never abide is that they become an end in themselves. That's why they would raise tax rates if, say, the economy got overheated. Or to pay for a specific program.

Paleo, you are the typical liberal: totally ignorant of actual history! FACT: the American dollar was backed by Gold until the 1970s. Bretton Woods did not change that fact. After Nixon cut all ties to gold the dollar "floated" and lost much of its value. This is fact and for you to ignore history while accusing others of not knowing what they are talking about is humorous to say the least...

"If you realize what this State and other States like it went through in the 20 years from 1919 to 1939--the depression of the early twenties, the depression of 11 years, of the thirties, the stagnation on the farms and in the cities--and then realize how this State has boomed relative to the rest of the Nation in the last 5 or 10 years, we realize a good deal of this was due to the wise decisions taken in the thirties when the framework was laid with great opposition to those who objected to what was being done in Washington, great opposition to the efforts which Franklin Roosevelt and the Congress made in those days. And yet, when we look from 1945 to now, almost 20 years, we have had a gradual rising tide of prosperity throughout our entire country."

He's crediting the New Deal. And later in the same speech....

"These projects produce wealth, they bring industry, they bring jobs, and the wealth they bring brings wealth to other sections of the United States. This State had about 200,000 cars in 1929. It has a million cars now. They weren't built in this State. They were built in Detroit. As this State's income rises, so does the income of Michigan. As the income of Michigan rises, so does the income of the United States. A rising tide lifts all the boats and as Arkansas becomes more prosperous so does the United States and as this section declines so does the United States. So I regard this as an investment by the people of the United States in the United States.

Did ryan t actually say, 'tax rates have nothing to do with economic growth?' Glad to hear it! We can finally put to rest the ridiculous idea of trickle down economics....that if you keep giving corporations tax cuts they'll create more jobs and expand businesses. For once, I totally agree with Ryan T.

Posted By: Did ryan t actually say, 'tax rates have nothing to do with economic growth?' Glad to hear it! We | June 15, 2011 at 01:54 PM

By all means rather than have a deep and honest debate about financial history let's just latch on to some cheap maneuver to avoid the whole debate. I clarified my comments on tax policy...even though you liberals pretend not to notice. You aren't debating but using cheap tactics to avoid the debate. Typical of the ignorant...

Considering that many tea party office holders and supporters have personal holdings in gold and gold derivatives, it's likely that they are pushing a gold standard to make those holdings soar. It's a BIG conflict of interest.